Cantor: House will consider balanced budget amendment in July

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Thursday that the House will consider a balanced budget amendment during the week of July 25.

“House Republicans have made clear that we will not agree to raise the debt limit without real spending cuts and binding budget process reforms to ensure that we don’t continue to max out the credit card,” Cantor said in a statement. “One option to ensure that we begin to get our fiscal house in order is a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. I have no doubt that my Republican colleagues will overwhelmingly support this common sense measure and I urge Democrats to as well in order to get our fiscal house in order.”

{mosads}A vote on the amendment would come shortly before Treasury’s August 2 deadline to raise the debt ceiling or face default.

“We are being asked by the Obama administration to approve a debt limit increase,” Cantor said. “While President Obama inherited a bad economy, his overspending and failure to enact pro-growth policies have made it worse and now our national debt is currently more than $14 trillion.”

Earlier Thursday, Cantor pulled out of budget talks led by Vice President Biden citing Democrats’ insistence on pursuing tax increases as part of a comprehensive deal that would lower the debt and deficit and allow a vote on raising the debt ceiling.

Last week, the House Judiciary Committee approved the balanced budget amendment but some conservatives had asked to postpone a vote to build support around the issue to gain the two-thirds vote needed to pass the measure.

Andrew Moylan of the National Taxpayers Union has asked for Republicans to push for a balanced budget amendment in the deficit talks with the White House and is concerned that a failed vote would kill the option.

Moylan has said he would like to see a floor vote before the Aug. 2 deadline to raise the debt ceiling. He has acknowledged that it will be an uphill battle to get support in both House and Senate. 

Two-thirds of each chamber is required for the constitutional amendment to advance to the states, at which point three-fourths of the states must agree within seven years for it to be adopted.

Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) also has said he wants to see the balanced budget amendment brought to the floor when it can pass.

“I would actually say we need to bring it to the floor when we have the best chance to win,” he said recently. “For me that’s the key. My gut tells me that might be closer to whenever we get to some kind of ultimate vote” on the debt limit deal.

House Budget Committee ranking member Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) called the balanced budget amendment “a trojan horse for the Republican budget that ends the Medicare guarantee while protecting tax earmarks for corporate special interests and expanding tax breaks for millionaires.”